Wednesday, October 22, 2014

‘Camp LoneStar’ Leader Arrested by ATF Agents for Firearms Violations

Kevin Lyndel “K.C.” Massey III, the current self-described
“commander” of the gathering of border militiamen near Brownsville,
Texas, dubbed Camp LoneStar, was arrested by federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on Monday.

Massey, a 48-year-old from Quinlan, Texas, was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, a federal offense.

According to a report from KGBT-TV
in Brownsville, Massey was convicted of burglary in 1988, when he was
21 years old. Paroled in 1993, his record has remained clean since then.

Massey appeared in a number
of the videos that emerged from the border watch at Camp LoneStar this
past summer, but he was never seen carrying a weapon in them. A number
of photos were posted
on the camp’s Facebook page and elsewhere on social media showing a
number of Camp LoneStar participants carrying weapons and wearing masks.

Massey described detaining border crossers
in the Facebook comments to one of the Camp LoneStar videos, which
showed militiamen detaining border crossers at gunpoint and cuffing them
with their hands behind their backs with zip ties. “Sorry we had to
‘Detain’ them,” Massey, wrote. “[B]ut they were wore out and just fell
down and gave up while the other 7-8 ran like gazelles!”

He later remarked: “One of the guys pissed himself!” Another chimed in, “Dude pissed himself bad.”
According to KGBT, Massey’s family posted on Facebook that ATF agents
had arrived suddenly at their North Texas home and seized all their
weapons.

Massey was arraigned Tuesday morning in Brownsville before U.S.
Magistrate Judge Ronald Morgan, who denied bond until a Friday morning
hearing. He remains in custody.

The Camp LoneStar page was mum about Massey’s arrest, but one of Massey’s main supporters, the North Carolina-based Secure Our Border, suggested in a Facebook post
that Massey was only being arrested because of corruption within
federal border law-enforcement operations. Referencing a 2012 report of
supposed Border Patrol corruption, it fumed:

2012 but do you think it has stopped? Think again ….. you
think the Corruption in The Border Patrol doesn’t go deep and run as
rampant as the stream of invaders of our Nation Think AGAIN! You think
that KC Massey III was arrested for the reasons in the post below? THINK
AGAIN!

KC, Archie and the Rest of Camp Lonestar are killing their Cash Cow
…. making it difficult for The Border Patrol to do Obama and his
Puppeteers dirty work, making it difficult to supplement their Federal
Salary and keep the Cartels and The Blow Hard Blow Heads in DC Happy and
their drug habits Satisfied!

A former participant at the camp named Rob Chupp told Hatewatch
that he and others decided to leave the camp when it became clear that
the overseers were not particular about whether or not felons could
participate in the camp, nor whether illegal weapons might be in use
there. It was a Camp LoneStar participant, John Frederick Forrester, who
drew gunfire from a Border Patrol officer in pursuit of a fugitive recently. Forrester, in fact, is a convicted felon.

Chupp, who was involved in organizing an ill-fated “Patriot” border-crossing event, said he and a number of other border watchers pulled out because of concerns about the legality of the operation.
“After the whole shooting thing, we figured out that some of them
were felons,” Chupp said. “We asked several of the guys to leave that we
found out were felons. Because yeah, we have a Second Amendment to
protect your right to bear arms, but we are also a nation of laws, and
there’s a reason we don’t let felons own guns. … And it came to be a
problem, and it was loud, and ‘We don’t care what the gun laws are,’ and
‘If we want to have this weapon even if it’s illegal, we’re gonna have
it.’ It just turned south, and we pulled out.”

Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.